The Football League wrapped its wait-and-see positions on Notts County, Leeds United and Queens Park Rangers yesterday around one bullish announcement: from now on, the league will demand to be told who owns its member clubs. That is an apparent advance for the chairman, Lord Mawhinney, in his campaign to introduce recognisably decent practices into the world's oldest football league – but it raised three central questions immediately, too.

First, until Notts County's romantic tale of a Middle Eastern takeover turned into a furious question mark over who the owners are, everybody thought the league did this anyway. The fit and proper person test is actually quite difficult to fail – although Flavio Briatore does have his work cut out to argue that being banned from motor sport, for conspiring to have a Formula One driver crash in the middle of a race, does not leave him on the wrong side of it. The rule is mostly proving useful for flushing out who new owners are, because they have to present themselves to be passed as fit and proper.

The league's own rules state that clubs must provide, within 14 days of a takeover, a list of all directors and people owning 30% or more of the shares. So it is news, really, that the league was not already insisting that it be given the identities of owners.

The second question raised by the league's announcement is that we do not yet know if the owners' names, once they have been provided, with proof, to the league's satisfaction, will be made public. Without that, transparency is not there. Leeds United, to quote a concrete example, must now tell the league how Ken Bates came to make the "error" of saying he jointly owned the club's Cayman Islands-registered holding company, when in fact, he now says, it is owned by the undisclosed holders of 10,000 shares.

Leeds have not so far replied to the league's letter asking for details. But when, as they now must, they do tell the league who owns the proud, fist‑clenched Yorkshire club via the Cayman Islands, will anybody outside the league be told? Will Leeds fans continue to pay their hard-earned to watch League One football, without being shown even the most basic respect, which is to be informed who owns their club, and to whom their money is going?

The league has so far said it cannot name the owners of clubs to fans or the public because of the Data Protection Act, but the Premier League has deftly side-stepped that problem; it asks its clubs themselves to publish the owners of 10% or more of their shares. Mawhinney has been justly proud of making the running in recent years on bringing some order to the previously wild west free-for-all of club ownership, but the Premier League has smartened itself up and now accelerated ahead.

The Premier League has also left the league behind in the third area left with a question mark by the league's announcement. The Premier League now expressly seeks to be satisfied not only about who its clubs' owners are, but where their money is coming from, and that it is legitimate. The Football League, though, has not said it will make the same inquiries, which leaves the possibility that owners might be passed as fit and proper while the money they bring into football is not.

All of this is now everyday work in the real world of business. Tepo Din, a senior associate in the financial crime team at City lawyers Stephenson Harwood, explained yesterday that any solicitor, accountant or bank has a legal duty to inquire into the ownership, and source of funds, of all their clients, under the 2007 Money Laundering Regulations. "The Football League is not covered by those regulations," he acknowledged, "but their practices are a long way behind the checks all professionals routinely have to make now of the companies they are dealing with, to satisfy themselves that money laundering is not taking place."

The league did take a step forward yesterday, but its fit and proper person test has a distance still to go.